Handwritten note from author figures in 'The Help' lawsuit

View full sizeThe Associated PressAblene Cooper and her son Antonio leave the Hinds County Courthouse after a judge dismissed her lawsuit against the author of "The Help." Cooper wants the case reinstated.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) —
A handwritten letter from author Kathryn Stockett has become the focal
point of a lawsuit over her bestselling novel "The Help," which has been
made into a box office hit.

A housekeeper who works for
Stockett's brother claims her likeness was used in the book without
her permission. "The Help" is based on relationships between white families
in Mississippi and the black women who worked for them in the 1960s. The
movie adaptation of "The Help" took the No. 1 spot in theaters this
past weekend with $20.5 million.

Hinds County, Miss., Circuit
Court Judge Tomie Green dismissed Ablene Cooper's lawsuit last week.
Green said the statute of limitations elapsed between the time that
Stockett gave Cooper a copy of the book in January 2009 and the
lawsuit's filing in February of this year.

Cooper's lawyer, Edward
Sanders, filed a motion last week to have the lawsuit reinstated. The
motion argues that the clock should not have started ticking on the
statute of limitations until Cooper read the book in the summer of 2010.
Sanders argued that Cooper didn't read it sooner because Stockett said
in the letter that, despite the similarity in names, the character
wasn't based on Cooper.

In a response filed with the court Monday,
Stockett's lawyers said the letter accompanied a copy of the book and
Cooper waited too long to sue under the one-year statute of limitations.

"The
note makes clear that Ms. Stockett told Mrs. Cooper that a character in
the novel was named 'Aibileen.' With note and novel in her possession,
Mrs. Cooper knew, or reasonably should have known, of her potential
claims in January 2009," Stockett's lawyers wrote in court papers.

Stockett's
defense team also said the letter has already been discussed in court
and the judge made the correct decision in throwing out the lawsuit.

Sanders had no comment Tuesday.

The judge has not made any determination on whether Aibileen was based on Cooper. Stockett denies she was.

In
the letter, Stockett says she only met Cooper a few times, but was
thankful she worked for the writer's brother because his kids love her.

"One
of the main characters, and my favorite character, is an African
American child carer named Aibileen," the letter said. "Although the
spelling is different from yours, and the character was born in 1911, I
felt I needed to reach out and tell you that the character isn't based
on you in any way."

The letter goes on to say the book is "purely
fiction" and inspired by Stockett's relationship with "Demetrie, who
looked after us and we loved dearly." The letter is referring to
Demetrie McLorn, the Stockett family's housekeeper, who died when the
author was a teenager.

An affidavit said Cooper knows Stockett, has kept her child before, and had no reason not to trust her.

"She's
a liar," Cooper screamed outside the courthouse after the lawsuit was
dismissed last week. "She did it. She knows she did it."

The
lawsuit also quotes passages from the book, including one in which
Aibileen's character describes a cockroach: "He black. Blacker than me."

The
lawsuit says Cooper found it upsetting and offensive to be portrayed as
someone "who uses this kind of language and compares her skin color to a
cockroach."